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A Look Inside Trump World's Pay-to-Play Pardon Scheme
Image of GV Wire news director and columnist Bill McEwen
By Bill McEwen, News Director
Published 60 minutes ago on
January 2, 2026

President Donald Trump at his desk in the Oval Office on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025. Trump got straight to work in the first moments of his second term. Within hours, he had signed dozens of executive orders and issued nearly 1,600 pardons as he quickly sought to remake the federal government. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/File)

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The Wall Street Journal recently delivered a blockbuster investigative story on how allies and lobbyists close to President Donald Trump are getting enormous fees from people hoping to obtain presidential pardons.

“In Donald Trump’s Washington, freedom has a price tag. The presidential pardon, one of the most serious powers granted by the Constitution, now looks like a product on a shelf.” — Attorney Mitch Jackson

As the publication has a strict paywall, the story isn’t widely available to hundreds of millions of Americans, who need to read it and draw their own conclusions.

However, southern California attorney Mitch Jackson and his legal team dug into the facts and produced an analysis for substack.com.

“What we found points to a disturbing pay to play system taking shape around one of the most serious powers in American government,” Jackson writes.

“In Donald Trump’s Washington, freedom has a price tag. The presidential pardon, one of the most serious powers granted by the Constitution, now looks like a product on a shelf. Allies and lobbyists close to the President chase huge sums from convicted defendants and their families in exchange for access to clemency. They treat justice like a private market where cash buys a shortcut out of consequences.”

In its story, The Wall Street Journal painted a picture of Trump loyalists and others charging hundreds of thousands and, in some cases, millions of dollars to seek pardons for convicted criminals.

Read more at Jackson’s Uncensored Objection blog.

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Bill McEwen,
News Director
Bill McEwen is news director and columnist for GV Wire. He joined GV Wire in August 2017 after 37 years at The Fresno Bee. With The Bee, he served as Opinion Editor, City Hall reporter, Metro columnist, sports columnist and sports editor through the years. His work has been frequently honored by the California Newspapers Publishers Association, including authoring first-place editorials in 2015 and 2016. Bill and his wife, Karen, are proud parents of two adult sons, and they have two grandsons. You can contact Bill at 559-492-4031 or at bmcewen@gvwire.com

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